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HITS (Hubs & Authorities)

The HITS (Hyperlink-Induced Topic Search) algorithm is a link analysis method used by Crawlith to identify two specific types of important pages on your site: Hubs and Authorities.

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How it works

Unlike PageRank, which assigns a single importance score, HITS assigns two scores to every page:
  1. Authority Score: A page is a good authority if it is linked to by many good hubs. These are usually destination pages with high-value content.
  2. Hub Score: A page is a good hub if it links to many good authorities. These are typically navigation pages, category indexes, or curated resource lists.

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Why it matters

Understanding Hubs and Authorities helps you:
  • Improve Navigation: Identify high-value “Hubs” that should be optimized to guide users to key content.
  • Discover Content Leaders: See which pages are naturally acting as the primary authorities in your site’s hierarchy.
  • Structure Auditing: Ensure that your intended “Landing Pages” have high authority scores and your “Category Pages” have high hub scores.

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Usage

Enable HITS calculation during a crawl using the --compute-hits flag:
Results are included in the metrics.json export and available for deep-dive analysis in the Visual Dashboard.